Reconstruction (2003) is not your standard Danish movie. To begin with, it's not a dogma movie but neither is it a crime/comedy in the style of Flickering Lights. You could say it is something quite different, but that would be to easy...
What we get is a story that blends the real with the imagined. Krister Henriksson ("Wallander - Innan frosten") plays a Swedish author/lecturer August who is in Copenhagen with his much younger wife Aimee (Maria Bonnevie, "I Am Dina"). As he is busy all day long his wife seems to get more and more estranged from him. In another part of the city is Alex (Nikolaj Lie Kaas, "Flickering Lights") who lives with his girlfriend Simone, also played by Bonnevie. Alex abandons Simone after a dinner at a restaurant and heads for the train. Then suddenly, by coincidence, Alex meets Aimee and they seem to fall in love immediately. But the next morning everything is not what it seemed to be the night before.
What begins like a Danish variation of Unfaithful (Gere-Lane-Martinez triangle) quickly becomes much more like Memento. Everything in Alex' life changes and people he used to know don't recognize him, like Simone and his best friend Leo (Nicolas Bro, "The Green Butchers"). What you get then is a wonderful movie with plenty to think about, and certainly one that won't take anything for granted. What is being written down is all we might get, what is real might be imagined.
Beautifully shot and directed by Christoffer Boe, it well deservedly won the Golden Camera and Le Label regard jeune awards at Cannes Film Festival.
**** (4 out of 5)
What we get is a story that blends the real with the imagined. Krister Henriksson ("Wallander - Innan frosten") plays a Swedish author/lecturer August who is in Copenhagen with his much younger wife Aimee (Maria Bonnevie, "I Am Dina"). As he is busy all day long his wife seems to get more and more estranged from him. In another part of the city is Alex (Nikolaj Lie Kaas, "Flickering Lights") who lives with his girlfriend Simone, also played by Bonnevie. Alex abandons Simone after a dinner at a restaurant and heads for the train. Then suddenly, by coincidence, Alex meets Aimee and they seem to fall in love immediately. But the next morning everything is not what it seemed to be the night before.
What begins like a Danish variation of Unfaithful (Gere-Lane-Martinez triangle) quickly becomes much more like Memento. Everything in Alex' life changes and people he used to know don't recognize him, like Simone and his best friend Leo (Nicolas Bro, "The Green Butchers"). What you get then is a wonderful movie with plenty to think about, and certainly one that won't take anything for granted. What is being written down is all we might get, what is real might be imagined.
Beautifully shot and directed by Christoffer Boe, it well deservedly won the Golden Camera and Le Label regard jeune awards at Cannes Film Festival.
**** (4 out of 5)